Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

The legendary Swedish film-maker Ingmar Bergman died this morning at his home on the island of Faro. According to his daughter, Eve, the director of The Seventh Seal and Persona died peacefully in his sleep. He was 89.

Having initially trained on the stage, Bergman went on to direct nearly 50 feature films, beginning with Crisis in 1946. His breakthrough came in 1957, courtesy of an extraordinary double-headed triumph of Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. He would go on to win three best foreign language film Oscars, for The Virgin Spring, Through a Glass Darkly and Fanny and Alexander….

A colossus of world cinema, Ingmar Bergman influenced a generation of film-makers who were inspired both by his effortless command of the medium and his high-minded sense of its moral and artistic possibilities. In 1988, Woody Allen hailed him as “probably the greatest artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera.”